Putting Children's TV to the Bechdel test

Will record wooly and tig and Me Too - thanks.

Scooby Doo probably mostly fails.

double, Everything's rosie fgails for me on the basis that Rosie is "mother" to all the other characters, most of which are male, and that the boy is an utter little shit. I guess that's not the bechdel test though.

Will record w

Agree, I think a lot of ones for younger viewers are hard to do as lots of the characters are hard to sex or don't really speak. I mean what gender are all the Tellytubbies? How do you tell?

Alphablocks - pass surely?
Show me Show me - pass
Me Too (I had to look up what this is called, the "Honey Pie" one) - Pass

Not sure about other progs, will watch with (slightly more) interest.

Imsosorryalan I really like Woolly and Tig. She is allowed to be grumpy or scared or whatever, sure she learns a lesson but I find it a refreshing change from all the simpering. Plus its not her job to mother all the other characters. But her dad is the gay one out of Taggart which I always find a bit distracting!

Dangermouse, massive fail.

Well IgglePiggle and Makka Pakka talk in ITNG sometimes. And Wiki says MP is male.

The Flumps - pass
Bagpuss - pass
Little Einsteins - pass

The Wombles - fail
Ivor The Engine - fail

Imsosorry what about Nina and the Neurons, I can cook, Me too! (Granny Murray is brilliant!!), Wooley and Tig (dd2 loves this). These are the ones we watch most often.

DadOnIce, there are a fair few episodes of Doctor Who that do fail (the one with the scary dollhouse, for example). But a lot would probably fail a test whereby any two characters who are not the Doctor discuss something that isn't the Doctor, or the Doctor and Rory only talk about Amy.

So an episode with Amy and River in would pass if they were discussing their travels but fail if discussing Rory or the Doctor. Ditto an episode with Rose and her mum or Martha and her mum might or might not pass depending on subjects discussed.

( I love Doctor Who and RTD is much better than most at gender mix and also his female characters are pretty varied, unlike Ballpark's description above)

There are quite a few that wouldn't pass either way aren't there?

Slightly off topic but I am finding it hard to actually find many current cbeebies programmes with positive female leads!
Everything's Rosie?
Angelina boring ballerina? - hardly inspiring..

Some of the baby ones wouldn't pass a male version of the test either though - eg Teletubbies and In The Night Garden. I reckon if it wouldn't pass either version it should get left out of the stats. Agree that Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and Thomas the Tank Engine are pretty much fails though.

Peppa pig, pass.

I assume "I Can Cook" passes.

Most of the programmes dd2 (age 2) likes are passing, so she must have picked up some good habits somewhere along the way.

Balamory - pass
Bob the builder - fail most days but ocassionally passes
Baby jake - fail
Charlie and lola - pass
Cloud babies - pass (I think, I'm not sure of the gender of all of them)

Interesting that the programmes that pass the bechdel test are mostly aimed at older children and the ones that fail are for the littlies. Arguably, by the time they move on to CBBC it might actually be too late though.

Fecking Zingfeckingzillas fails since the only two female characters do not speak to each other in any meaningful way since one of them is inarticulate. And the bloody beach byrds all speak in one voice. Can you tell I hate ZZ?

Octonauts. Only one female character. Never goes on any adventures.

The Bechdel test is what it is - it's subtle and revealing both about the industry as a whole and individual films, but it has its limits.

If The Hurt Locker/The Hunt For Red October/Castaway fail the Bechdel test then that doesn't make them actively bad films that feminists should object to. 27 Dresses and Sex and the City 2 pass the Bechdel test comfortably, but that doesn't mean that they are "good" films, or that the Bechdel test needs to be altered to exclude them - just that it is not the only criterion on which you can judge a film.

Wooley and Tig - pass
Something special - fail
Me too! - pass
Tweenies does pass this test, Bella and Fizz often talk about things other than men/boys. It may not be great as a representation of females but it does pass this test.
Chuggington - pass

I don't like to be too picky cos I know we fems have a reputation for nit-picking but sometimes I think that even when females are well-represented numerically they are not portrayed in a very nice way.

One stereotype that really annoys me is the one where the female character is a real know-it-all without much of a sense of humour and is juxtaposed against a relaxed easy-going male. Or when two females are shown together they are often in opposition to each other, with the haughty-toity one invariably being the more power-hungry/feminist one who needs bringing down.

It's like with Tracey Beaker, Tracey's a pill and lots of the female characters are downright mean to the boys

I think an extra criteria to the Bechdel test should be where the two females are not in opposition.

Of course this problem would be solved if there were more female characters, because they would be less representative of women as a whole and could afford to be more nuanced.

Tweenies passes, surely?

And a programme with a male lead can easily pass the B test, and will normally be the better for it - M's interrogation by a female MP about failings in her role is a sign that the film takes her seriously as an individual, not just as "Bond's Boss" (I know there are problems with the presentation of the female MP, but from a Bechdel point of view it's a win).

Generally speaking TV drama sails through this stuff whilst films struggle - it's a side-effect of ensemble casting and the need to flesh out each character.

Nina and the Neurons - pass! And it would pass the gender swapped test too as two male Neurons often talk about the task.

Hmm, not sure about ITNG. At least one of the Tombliboos is female and she may sometimes talk to Upsy daisy, and half the Pontipine and Wottinger children are female.